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Contact: Shaun Mejia, 206.623.5124 x119
Opening today at the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience, is Community Spread: How We Faced a Pandemic, an exhibit, created by a Community Advisory Committee that met virtually through much of 2020, that takes visitors back to the early days of the pandemic and examines how uncertainty, fear, anti-Asian racism, and historical inequalities shaped the way COVID-19 has affected different Asian Pacific American (APA) communities.On March 23, 2020, Washington Governor Jay Inslee announced a statewide stay-at-home order to help contain the novel coronavirus. Fear of COVID-19 had already taken a heavy toll on the Chinatown-International District (C-ID), and a year later, APA communities are still feeling the effects of the pandemic on businesses, livelihoods, and our sense of community and safety. Through first-person stories, photographs, videos, and artwork, the exhibit honors the losses and hardships COVID-19 has brought, and highlights the creativity, resilience, and mutual aid that APA communities have shown in their response.
In the exhibit, visitors will learn how APAs have drawn on their cultural heritage and the legacy of APA activism to face these challenges. We’ll look at community efforts like the InterimCDA’s neighborhood grocery deliveries, mask-sewing efforts by the Refugee Artisan Initiative and ad hoc groups like the “Sew Sisters” and the “Auntie Sewing Squad,” and the artists who came together to paint BLM solidarity murals on boarded up businesses in the C-ID after protests erupted in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. Artists including Monyee Chau, Larine Chung, Namita Gupta, Tamiko Thiel, and Rene Yung, have found ways to channel the emotional and social turmoil of the last year into powerful visual works. Visitors will be able to explore oral history interviews and images through an interactive digital StoryMap, available in the gallery and online.
For more info about the exhibit, visit wingluke.org/community-spread
Last updated: May 7, 2021